Neither Man Nor Woman

Neither Man Nor Woman PDF Author: Serena Nanda
Publisher: Cengage Learning
ISBN:
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 230

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Book Description
This ethnography is a cultural study of the Hijras of India, a religious community of men who dress and act like women. It focuses on how Hijras can be used in the study of gender categories and human sexual variation.

Neither Man Nor Woman

Neither Man Nor Woman PDF Author: Serena Nanda
Publisher: Cengage Learning
ISBN:
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 230

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Book Description
This ethnography is a cultural study of the Hijras of India, a religious community of men who dress and act like women. It focuses on how Hijras can be used in the study of gender categories and human sexual variation.

With Respect to Sex

With Respect to Sex PDF Author: Gayatri Reddy
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226707547
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 326

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Book Description
With Respect to Sex is an intimate ethnography that offers a provocative account of sexual and social difference in India. The subjects of this study are hijras or the "third sex" of India—individuals who occupy a unique, liminal space between male and female, sacred and profane. Hijras are men who sacrifice their genitalia to a goddess in return for the power to confer fertility on newlyweds and newborn children, a ritual role they are respected for, at the same time as they are stigmatized for their ambiguous sexuality. By focusing on the hijra community, Gayatri Reddy sheds new light on Indian society and the intricate negotiations of identity across various domains of everyday life. Further, by reframing hijra identity through the local economy of respect, this ethnography highlights the complex relationships among local and global, sexual and moral, economies. This book will be regarded as the definitive work on hijras, one that will be of enormous interest to anthropologists, students of South Asian culture, and specialists in the study of gender and sexuality.

Governing Gender and Sexuality in Colonial India

Governing Gender and Sexuality in Colonial India PDF Author: Jessica Hinchy
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 110849255X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 325

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Book Description
Examines the colonial and postcolonial governance of gender and sexuality through the history of transgender Hijras in north India.

Hijras, Lovers, Brothers

Hijras, Lovers, Brothers PDF Author: Vaibhav Saria
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019287389X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
Against easy framings of hijras that render them marginalized, Saria shows how hijras makes the normative Indian family possible. The book also shows that particular practices of hijras, such as refusing to use condoms or comply with retroviral regimes, reflect not ignorance or irresponsibility but rather a specific idiom of erotic asceticism arising in both Hindu and Islamic traditions. This idiom suffuses the densely intertwined registers of erotics, economics, and kinship that inform the everyday lives of hijras and offer a repertoire of self-fashioning distinct from the secularized accounts within the horizon of public health programmes and queer theory. Engrossingly written and full of keen insights, the book moves from the small pleasures of the everyday laughter, flirting, and teasing to impossible longings, kinship networks, and economies of property and of substance in order to give a fuller account of trans lives and of Indian society today.

The Parcel

The Parcel PDF Author: Anosh Irani
Publisher: Knopf Canada
ISBN: 0345816765
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 259

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Book Description
Finalist for the Writers' Trust Fiction Prize and for the Governor General's Literary Award, this powerful new work, about a transgender sex worker in the red-light district of Bombay who is given an unexpected task, is a gripping literary page-turner--difficult and moving, surprising and tender. Anosh Irani's best novel yet, and his first with Knopf Canada. The Parcel's astonishing heart, soul and unforgettable voice is Madhu--born a boy, but a eunuch by choice--who has spent most of her life in a close-knit clan of transgender sex workers in Kamathipura, the notorious red-light district of Bombay. Madhu identifies herself as a "hijra"--a person belonging to the third sex, neither here nor there, man nor woman. Now, at 40, she has moved away from prostitution, her trade since her teens, and is forced to beg to support the charismatic head of the hijra clan, Gurumai. One day Madhu receives a call from Padma Madam, the most feared brothel owner in the district: a "parcel" has arrived--a young girl from the provinces, betrayed and trafficked by her aunt--and Madhu must prepare it for its fate. Despite Madhu's reluctance, she is forced to take the job by Gurumai. As Madhu's emotions spiral out of control, her past comes back to haunt her, threatening to unravel a lifetime's work and identity. This is a dark, devastating but ultimately redemptive novel that promises to be one of the most talked-about publications of the year.

The Truth About Me

The Truth About Me PDF Author: A Revathi
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 8184752717
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 342

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Book Description
We got stared at a lot. People asked out loudly—some out of curiosity, others out of malice—whether we were men or women or ‘number nines’ or devadasis. Several men made bold to touch us, on our backs, on our shoulders. Some attempted to grab our breasts. ‘Original or duplicate?’ they shouted and hooted. At such moments I felt despair and wondered if there would ever be a way for us to live with dignity and make a decent living. Revathi was born a boy, but felt and behaved like a girl. In telling her life story, Revathi evokes marvellously the deep unease of being in the wrong body that plagued her from childhood. To be true to herself, to escape the constant violence visited upon her by her family and community, the village-born Revathi ran away to Delhi to join a house of hijras. Her life became an incredible series of dangerous physical and emotional journeys to become a woman and to find love. The Truth about Me is the unflinchingly courageous and moving autobiography of a hijra who fought ridicule, persecution and violence both within her home and outside to find a life of dignity.

The Invisibles

The Invisibles PDF Author: Zia Jaffrey
Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson
ISBN: 9781861590558
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
In this extemely funnya dn fascinating book, Zia Jaffrey goes on a journey to find out just who the hijras are, why the subject is taboo and why their historyhas never been recorded. With the help of journalists, police commisioners, detectives and doctors, she delves into the mysterious world of the eunuchs and traces their tradition through layers of Hindu, Muslim and British history, and finally through talking to the Eunuchs themselves.

Culture, Society and Sexuality

Culture, Society and Sexuality PDF Author: Richard Guy Parker
Publisher: Psychology Press
ISBN: 9781857288117
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 504

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Book Description
This work offers an introduction to the central debates in sexuality research. Among the issues examined are the social and cultural dimensions of sex, human sexuality and sex research.

Beyond Emasculation

Beyond Emasculation PDF Author: Adnan Hossain
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316517047
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 249

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Book Description
Studies hijras in Bangladesh, challenging the dominant representation of hijra as either a third sex or a form of transgender.

The Hijras. An alternative Gender Role in India

The Hijras. An alternative Gender Role in India PDF Author: Nina Daub
Publisher: GRIN Verlag
ISBN: 3656725454
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 20

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Book Description
Seminar paper from the year 2013 in the subject Sociology - Relationships and Family, grade: 1,0, University of Trier, language: English, abstract: Still, in every culture there are people whose sex cannot be clearly identified or who do not identify with the gender that is designated for them. These individuals are in a state of liminality, which means that they are in a situation that is “ambiguous or indeterminate” (Boyd and Lassiter 218). The word liminality comes from the Latin word limen, which means “threshold”. Hence, these people cannot exactly classify themselves as belonging to one or the other sex or gender. A famous example of such people are the hijras of India who represent an alternative or mixed sex/gender role since they “are culturally conceptualized as neither man nor woman, neither male nor female” (Nanda 2008: 461). The hijras, the so called third gender in India, are usually represented by biological males who take on a feminine gender or sexual role. They are “people whom we in the West would differentiate as eunuchs, homosexuals, transsexuals, hermaphrodites, and transvestites” (Nanda 1993: 175). However, a great difference between alternative genders in India and the West can be seen especially concerning their social acceptance. Our Western culture, “where ideas about sex and gender are conflated rather than viewed separately, [is] not well socialized to the possibility of gender variation” (Boyd and Lassiter 217), whereas the hijra’s “role is so deeply rooted in Indian culture that it can accommodate a wide variety of [...] gender identities [and] cross-gender behaviors [...]” (Nanda 1993: 175). Why the hijras of India take an established role within Hindu culture, who they really are, and what their role in society actually is, will be presented in this work.